The Witling Read Online Free PDF Page A

the stonework resembled those of real plants. But there was a touch of gaucherie in imitating life with stone or snow. It was the sort of thing he had seen taken to an abstracted extreme in the Snowking’s crystal palace at the ends of the world. “And,” Moragha rushed on when he got no response, “the mining caves of Bodgaru are the largest in the world. Summerfolk have mined the copper hereabouts for more than a century … .”
    From the rear of the party, servants continued to teleport a warm breeze in from the southern hemisphere. Beside Pelio, the prefect was beginning to sweat in his tooled leather oversuit, but the warm air had less to do with that than the prince’s continued silence. Few flatterers could contend with his stony silence and expressionless gaze. At court, his silence was regarded as a sign of boorishness, stupidity. And in truth, there was arrogance in Pelio’s manner—but there was more distrust and loneliness.
    Finally Moragha’s prepared speech ground to a halt. The two walked silently for many paces, until Pelio looked at the other, and said, “Tell me about last night’s skirmish, good Parapfu.”
    “How did you—” the prefect started, then gargled back his surprise. “There is not a great deal to tell, Your Highness. The affair is still a mystery. My agents detected intruders in the hills to the north. I dispatched troops from the garrison. They encountered a large flying creature, which they destroyed.”
    “And the intruders?” prodded the boy.
    The prefect waved his hand in casual dismissal. “Witl—persons of no account, Your Highness.”
    Witlings! So his anonymous informant had written the truth. Imagine witlings fighting normal people. “Snowfolk?” Pelio asked casually, trying to hide his excitement.
    “No, Your Highness. At least, I have never seen any Snowmen like them.”
    “I will interview them.”
    “But Baron-General Ngatheru has expert interrogators at Atsobi … .”
    You self-contradicting fool, thought Pelio. So you have something really interesting here.
    “The strangers have been moved to the garrison?”
    “Uh, no, Your Highness, they are in one of the dungeons beneath my manse. The baron-general thought—”
    “Fine, Parapfu. Then I will interview these strange prisoners immediately.”
    The prefect knew better than to oppose a royal whim, even Pelio’s. “Certainly, Your Highness. It will be most convenient to use the transit pool in my manse.”
    By now they had reached the rose-quartz terrace surrounding the prefect’s home. The manse was only five hundred feet from the lake, but it was some fifty feet up the side of the ridge line that protected the Royal Road’s terminus against surveillance from the north. No wonder Moragha had not suggested they teleport to the manse: using a transit pool in weather like this would be a cold and unpleasant business.
    Like most buildings in wintry regions, the manse had a doorway carved through its walls. Pelio liked doorways; they gave him some of the mobility other people had naturally. Inside the manse there was too little space for Pelio’s wind rengers to do their job, and the rooms were chill and stale. The pale light filtering through the windows was a good deal less cheerful than what Pelio was used to in the open ballrooms of the Sunmerpalace. Moragha’s bondsmen circulated among the nobles with drink and candy. The prefect had even managed to import a small group of singers from south of Atsobi. It was a festive scene … of sorts.
    Parapfu led the prince and his guards away from the crowd and through a wilted interior garden to the manse’s transit pool, where his servants produced watertight slickers.
    “The dungeon is nearly sixteen hundred feet below ground level, Your Highness, so I deem the transit pool the most convenient entrance.”
    Pelio nodded, slipped into the slicker. If Moragha were sufficiently skilled, they could jump right from where they were standing. But sixteen